Posts
Comments
Of course it leaves things on the table. Presumably the authors judged that it'd be infeasible to directly attack party authority. If you're going to have party primaries (never mind first past the post), it makes some sense for them to have consequences. Approval/freedom voting ought to allow for dispensing with primaries altogther, but I totally respect that is likely too big of a bite right now.
For my future reference: I don't see the rules you cite in the section of the Missouri constitution that the initiative would amend https://www.sos.mo.gov/CMSImages/Publications/CurrentMissouriConstitution.pdf?v=202212#page=124 so it must be in the statues; I see the 10k (for statewide offices) signature requirement for independent candidates in https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=115.321&bid=6088 winner of party primary to be only candidate of that party in general https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=115.343&bid=6100 and I'm not sure I see the requirement to register as an independent before the primary ends, but likely I'm just overlooking that, or it is implied by the various timing requirements? https://revisor.mo.gov/main/PageSearch.aspx?tb1=independent%20candidate&op=and&tb2=&idx=2&chapter=115
I guess you're commenting on https://www.sos.mo.gov/cmsimages/Elections/Petitions/2024-110.pdf
It seems like a very useful improvement over what I presume is current election law in Missouri. If there's any existing mechanism for a primary loser to get on the general election ballot (as an independent?) I don't see how this initiative overrides that. What am I missing?
Great cause, godspeed!
Interestingly it appears Show Me Integrity and Missouri Agrees have rebranded approval voting as freedom voting.
https://www.showmeintegrity.org/freedomvoting
https://www.missouriagrees.org/learn-more
Or if the rebranding already existed elsewhere, I'm idly curious about its origin. No mention yet in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
In my model, we got AI in large part because we couldn’t get flying cars, or build houses where people want to live, or cure diseases
Would enjoy reading more about that. How does it work? Talent and investment for AI would be doing other cool things, if those cool things were allowed, moreso than the talent and investment for AI would be increased as a result of more people doing more cool things?
I enjoyed it, almost want to go for the ubercop idea. A serious alternative way to increase emergency vehicle utilization (by weight, size, cost or similar) is to make them smaller. They're unnecessarily monster sized, in the US anyway. #DefundPoliceSUVs
Same. Aging is bad, don't expect it to be solved (escape velocity reached) in my lifetime.
I also agree that nearish AGI excites and whether deemed good (I'd welcome it, bet worth taking, though scary) or doom, far AGI is relatively boring, and that may psychologically contribute to people holding shorter timelines.
Third "fact" at the top of the original post "We've made enormous progress towards solving intelligence in the last few years" is somewhat refuted by the rest: if it's a math-like problem, we don't know how much progress toward AGI we've made in the last few years. (I don't know enough to hold a strong opinion on this, but I hope we have! Increase variance, the animal-human experience to date is disgustingly miserable, brutal, and stupid, do better or die trying.)
I know this is an estimate for imminent global nuclear war (for which I'd give a lower estimate, but even if it were 100x lower, 0.17% -- and it isn't -- that would be wholly unacceptable) but I don't want global nuclear war in my lifetime.
So it's necessary to also consider how various outcomes of the current war may have on the liklihood of global nuclear war in the next decades. In this vein, the best argument for ensuring that Ukraine wins in spite of Russian nuclear threats, is that allowing Russia to achieve a relatively favorable outcome on the basis of its nuclear threats incentives proliferation -- of nukes, and of nuke threats. This would surely increase the liklihood of global nuclear war in the next decades, whether through error or escalation.
The best outcome of the war in my opinion would be a restart of global nuclear weapon elimination. It's even conceivable (though I'm not wishing for it!) that escalation to use of nukes in Ukraine is the insult that the world needs to eliminate nukes, and any leader who makes any move toward getting them.
Security strikes me as a better word than safety, ethics, or responsibility. More prestigious, and the knowledge and methods of the existing security research field is probably more relevant to addressing AI x-risks than are those of existing safety, ethics, etc fields.
a new, updated booster...won’t make much difference even to those who take advantage of it at this point
I'm planning to take advantage, but would enjoy reading an analysis of how much/little difference it can be expected to make. I guess this has been done by many people, pointers idly wanted/appreciated.
I wonder if using the title research software engineer, posting on RSE job boards, networking in their communities, adhering to their norms, might help with matching. Idle/uninformed speculation; I only have become aware of the self-identified field/title in the last year, and gather it is only about 10 years old.
Not an alternative, but an add-on: subsidize the market. This does require someone who wants the info badly enough to pay the subsidy. Robin Hanson recently blogged about how one might focus subsidy on trades one is most interested in.
I did not know about the subjects of the last two other news items. It appears https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusnano should be updated; the Russian version seems to have updates about financial difficulties pending review. I guess https://research.nu.edu.kz/en/organisations/laboratory-of-human-microbiome-and-longevity is a relevant page for the last? Is there any overall writeup?
Sure, here's a version using truthy birth and death dates, though still very imperfect https://w.wiki/4q4Q
How long have heads of state lived relative to almost heads of state? I recall several years ago hearing about https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/34077/1/543282147.pdf which finds that Nobel prize winners gained approximately two years over mere nominees. Concluding paragraph:
It might be argued that an approximately two- year gain in lifespan from winning a Nobel Prize is a small number of extra years. However, the controls here are extraordinarily successful scientists. By any usual standard, all are high-status individuals. If the idea that social status improves lifespan is truly correct, the size of the effect may in a practical sense be larger in a more normal population of people.
Tangentially regarding "I'm tired enough of copy-pasting Wikipedia links", Wikidata is in theory a great resource for this kind of quick research, though it has a learning curve (which I am by no means far along, and haven't used enough to progress) which includes dealing with multiple values, relationships that aren't exactly what one wants for the question at hand, etc. For example, a naive query https://w.wiki/4pdJ for the longest lived (deceased) heads of state would need to filter out conflicting or otherwise untrustworthy dates and non-national level states to have more expected results.
The LWO has and can bend a lot without breaking. Great power war risks actually breaking the LWO, and more.
Great power war risks destruction of the LWO. The LWO can and does take a whole lot of mockery (including from the US) and keep on ticking in the most important respects: peace and continued technical progress.
Anyway the EEZ conflicts are between jurisdictions in the region, not the US. Freedom of commercial navigation will continue in the absence of military conflict. I expect the oceans to be more and more governed by states, and if it doesn't destroy itself in unnecessary conflict, US power will benefit, as will the UK and France due to their massive head starts (far flung island territories). For example, if seasteading ever becomes viable, over the long term it'll contribute to more governance of oceans by states. Island building is just the beginning.
China's interests have been basically unchanged since 1978. Its primary objective is to maintain internal domestic stability i.e. prevent regime change.
...China has prospered under the [Liberal World Order]. Rather than establishing broad international coalitions, China tends to pursue its interests bilaterally. With a few exceptions (like the dispute over the South China Sea) China is content to play according to the rules of the LWO.
...
Of all the potential points of conflict, the obvious ones are Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Great, there's no reason for the US to fight China over control of sea and land next to China. The sooner the US realizes this, the safer and more prosperous we all, and the LWO, will be.
I found the Czech references. https://www.zakonyprolidi.cz/cs/2013-186#p31 is the law, which went into effect in 2019. More explanation at https://www.mzv.cz/losangeles/en/consular_information/czech_citizenship_and_vital_records/children_and_grandchildren_of_former.html and https://www.svu2000.org/notices-archive/czech-citizenship-law/
My understanding is that Czech citizenship by descent is aimed at people who have parents or grandparents who were citizens of Czechia or Czechoslovakia, ruling out most (a guess; me anyway) US people with Czech ancestry, whose ancestors were citizens of Austria-Hungary. Even this is a fairly recent liberalization (sorry, I can't turn up a reference quickly, though I looked into it sometime during 2020, in part out of jealousy of friends with Irish or Italian ancestors).
I did not know about the Slovak Living Abroad program, thanks for noting that ! Based only on a [reddit post](https://ns.reddit.com/r/Slovakia/comments/jr3y5c/application_for_slovak_living_abroad_certificate/) it seems doable (for someone with some Slovak ancestry, which includes me) and a relatively quick path to citizenship (potentially after 3 years of residence).
optimal philanthropy starts around $10
What does this mean, assuming it isn't joke? I skimmed the articles linked from http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/3a2/100_for_the_best_article_on_efficient_charty_the/ and don't see an obvious argument that optimal philanthropy starts at some amount.